As I come off of my sabbatical, I’d like to give you some context about why I needed a break. Yes, sabbaticals are important in ministry work. I can’t deny there is some ‘wear and tear’ that comes with pastoring (like all jobs).
But that’s not the only reason.
A couple months ago, my wife said, “You aren’t healthy, and you haven’t been healthy for weeks, maybe months, maybe a year.” My wife was being generous. I think it was longer than that, actually, and there was a reason for it that reflected what was happening in my personal life.
I also want to talk about what I hope life looks like on the other side of the break, as Jesus has been faithful and good to me. I am finally learning understand what it means that He will search for his lost, floundering sheep until he finds them. I have on my bedroom wall that shows this. This is how I have come to experience Jesus.
Here is my story.
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When I was a child, I had many wonderful experiences. I also experienced two life changing things that were quite traumatic: I was significantly bullied by my peers in really life-altering ways, and I was molested by adults I should have been able to trust both spiritually and relationally. This mostly centered around two years, when I was 9 and 10 years old, though the bullying started earlier and lasted longer.
While I had suspicions and one isolated memory of the abuse (that I had glosses over), about two years ago I began to remember more after someone close to me revealed their childhood trauma. I found out that’s not an unusual reaction: someone very close to me revealed their pain, and it caught the attention of something inside of me. I also found out it’s not unusual for men in their 50s to have this happen.
It was upsetting and destabilizing, to say the least. It’s hard to describe remembering what it was like to be abused. I sought some counsel from Jackie probably about this time of year two years ago on when I would know if it was time to get professional help. She said, “When life becomes unmanageable.”
Well, it eventually did. There was a day when I was in a meeting at church that had some relational tension. It ended well, but I went out to my truck and fell apart. I just sobbed and sobbed. I knew in my head that it wasn’t about the meeting per se; it was about something that meeting reminded me of.
And so, I sought counsel.
I had discovered at Freedom Farm that interacting with horses really confronted some insecurities and fears I had, so I started my therapy as a client at Peace Ranch. It was really helpful. More on that in a bit. After that, a took a break before beginning a different focus with an EMDR trauma therapist in town, which is ongoing.
I am going to have to paint with a broad brush this morning. There are many details that aren’t appropriate to share from the pulpit. I have had so many wonderful friends and experiences in my life, I want to be clear that I feel blessed to have the life I have, but I am feeling the need to share with you about 1) how the threads of trauma were woven into the tapestry of my life, 2) how that legacy shaped me in ways I wasn’t always aware of, and 3) how a path toward healing has been revelatory about myself and God.
It’s been a wild ride. There were days when I just cried for what I started to call Little Me, the child who did not tell others his pain, and for whom no one grieved, so I did. I remember coming home one day after talking with a sweet friend for whom life has been so hard, and I told Sheila, “I cried for her when I left, and then I started thinking about how no one cried for me, so I am going to do that today.” And I did. Sheila did too.
I would take naps and fall asleep holding my hand and telling Little Me he was safe now. I took Little Me fishing. I invited Jesus to sit with us in our sorrow and healing and our fishing, and I know that he did.
Some days, I experienced the world as a 10-year-old. It’s hard to describe, but everything was bigger, and there was a childlike innocence. And fear. And curiosity. And a lot of being overwhelmed.
So many days I would spend hours in my room, in the dark, in the safest room I knew. I would invite Jesus to join us, and I would remember, and weep, and then sleep.
One of the things that surprised me was how much the legacy of the bullying came roaring back. The first EMDR session was on one of my memories and boy howdy did that lead us into months of discussion.
I unpacked some really deep emotions that I had never really owned, and in that process began to see more clearly how terribly it damaged my sense of self; how desperate it made me to always want to be liked; how much to this day I react to people who bully others with their words and actions. It’s more than just, “You shouldn’t do that.” It’s, “I know how being treated like that damaged me, and that is not okay.”
As I cared for for Little Me, I started to see just how much of my adult life had been shaped by those childhood wounds of bullying and molestation. I am telling you this because I have become increasingly aware of how I was living a trauma-impacted life that was not a trauma-informedlife. I wasn’t aware just how profoundly the abuse I experienced as a child shaped me.
In some ways, it brought out good things as a reaction to the bad I experienced – I never wanted to pass on what was given to me (except on the basketball court. Oof. I had so many anger issues that I can’t get into right now.)
In other ways, it really messed with my sense of identity and worth, the way I experienced other people (especially those who reminded me of past abusers), my body image, my pursuit to prove my masculinity (by cultural standards), my quest to learn how to control every situation I was in (‘hyper-vigilance’ is a term I have learned to know), my sense that it was never enough to just “be me.” I would need to impress people to be liked (that’s a response to bullying), or I would need to show up how other people expected me to so they could get what they wanted (that’s the response to the abuse).
I remember as a kid that Hulk was my favorite comic book character. Why? Because Hulk is the strongest there is. You didn’t mess with Hulk – if you did, you learned not to, because Hulk would smash. I decided I would get really strong (and hopefully big like Hulk) so that no one would mess with me. That didn’t work out like I had hoped, but it didn’t stop me from trying for decades. I just wanted to be physically present in such a way that people wouldn’t even think about messing with me.
The other thing was that I learned how to use my words. I could talk. I could get people to laugh. I could steer conversations – sometimes I could even change the tenor of room. To this day, people tell me how good I am with words. It’s true. I am. That can be a good thing, but that skill didn’t come from a place of health. If I could just get the words just right, and read everyone’s emotions, I could keep all my venues safe, and no one would be hurt, most importantly me.[1] I recently saw a meme from an online therapy group that resonated with me.
“’You're good with words.’ Thanks. My trauma response is to problem solve, sincerely explain myself, and present evidence because of feeling constantly misunderstood and attacked. As as result, I come across as stoic, analytical and an over-communicator; meanwhile, I was suppressing intense emotions. I quickly take on responsibility to fix or clarify things because of the traumatic times when no one had my back. This ‘gift’ with words is a fawning reflex to once feeling overwhelmingly unsafe."
That’s not the whole story of why I am good with words, of course. But it was far more a part of my story than I realized.
Equine therapy at Peace Ranch was revelatory in terms of how I related to others. Horses are amazingly intuitive animals. They read body language, and sense emotions. They communicate with themselves and people in fascinating ways.
I had learned with Julie’s huge draft horse, Hannah, that I had issues about fear of rejection, reaction to what felt like bullying, inability to be with Hannah on her own terms and not mine – like, I didn’t get to control the situation, and I hated it. The first time Hannah bumped into me my anxiety skyrocketed. When she walked away when I tried to pet her, I was devastated. Why is it that a horse makes me do a deep dive into what is going on inside me?!?!?!?
Peace Ranch put me into these dynamics with a whole herd of horses. I remember once walking toward horses and I was nervous how they respond to me, so what did I do? I talked. They didn’t care. They were observing my body language and sensing my presence, but I was convinced that enough words would to the trick. It didn’t. But I remember telling my therapist and saying, “That’s what I do all the time. I lead with words to guide people’s responses to me.”
Part of the grace of God is that I have been able to use my words for so many good things in the world, and for that I am grateful. It turns out being good with words often does have a really good impact on others. Words fitly spoken are like apples of gold in settings of silver (Proverbs 25:11), and I have “fitly spoken” many things. But I have also become more aware of how often my reliance on words to diffuse every tense situation came from a place of fear, and it caused me to manipulate situations and people in way that ended making things worse in the end.
Relationally, when things went wrong – tension, anger, misunderstanding, bullying, molestation – I tended to “fawn”, which is what I had done in response to being hurt as a child. The goal is to let the threat take its toll and move on. Just get out of that place of pain and into a place of safety. Traumatized children tend to think they did something wrong to invite what was happening to them. It was a default assumption as an adult, when I was in similar situations, that when things went wrong – when I was hurt again or someone was angry - it must be my fault. If you are thinking, “Those dots don’t connect,” your right. That part of the legacy of trauma. It deceived me into thinking I deserved what happened to me then, and it was appropriate to believe that I was always the problem now.
In all of this, I developed a real cynicism and maybe even fear of those who had positions of power. My experience for several years as a child was that people with power were to be feared because they hurt you. (And no one in power at that time came to me aid – the good ones didn’t know, and yet that is what I experienced.) \
Since that time I have had really wonderful, godly people in positions of power in my life who showed me what healthy power could look like (I think Jesus called it meekness in the Sermon on the Mount). But there was always a part of me that remembered when power had hurt.
When I was first given the opportunity at Peace Ranch to put a halter on a horse and lead it, I was surprised how much I did NOT want to do that. Why would I make a horse do what I wanted it to do? I did it, and it was great for both of us (I think?) but I just didn’t feel comfortable. I don’t want to make others do what I want them to do.
Of course, all of this struggle with power shaped how I saw God.
MY VIEW OF GOD
God is all-powerful, right? The ultimate authority figure. What do I do with that? Well, for a long time, I had trouble separating my traumatic experiences with people from my relationship with God.
It was too easy to believe that I was valuable and loved only to the extent that I made God happy to have me as His child. And that fact that God would love me – well, that says something about how amazing God is, because look at me. “God loves even me,” I have said so many times from this pulpit, as if I was loathsome to God.
As if I was not created a little lower than the angels, and crowned with glory and honor, and bore His image.
As if God was not pleased to call me friend.
As if the parable of the Prodigal Son meant nothing.
As if God did not love having me as His child.
I spent so many years groveling when the Father was inviting me to a feast at the table he had set – for me.
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“Victim” is tough word. It feels weak. The first time I said out loud, “I was a victim of sexual abuse and bullying,” I cried because I didn’t want that to be true. But it was. I had in fact been victimized, and I hated that, which is just part of the terrible fallout of abuse. It wasn’t a label to wear as a point of identity. It was just an honest statement.
But there is another thing that is true also. I am a child of God. That was sufficient for me to be honored and protected. I was not someone who deserved the evil others did to me; I was the victim of the broken sinfulness of others.
This has impacted me in ways that make sense, and I will not be apologetic or filled with shame for doing the best I could, and I will not beat myself up for the ways in which adult Anthony wrestled as best he could with history.
For example, I tried for so many years to be culturally masculine. As a child, men had treated me as they did the women in their lives; my peers had treated me as if I was beneath them. How does one respond to that? Well, by proving mymasculinity!!! – not biblically , but culturally. In my circles, it meant sports, muscles, construction work, sweat. It meant that I always compared myself to other “manly men” and successful men – at least as I measured it in my head. Muscles, beards, boy toys, manly skills like fixing cars (which I still can’t do). But I could bench 300+ lbs. Take that. Who’s the man now?
It’s sound so foolish to say out loud, because I don’t think any of those things actually measure masculinity, but that’s where I was for so many years.
As much as I knew it in my head, I couldn’t get it into my heart that what Jesus thought about me was enough. I had to learn that “Child of God” was my core identity, and being a real man (and ladies, I think this also true for being a real woman) was becoming like the model of a perfectly righteous human, Jesus – slow to anger, abounding in mercy, characterized by love.
My identity is meant to be set by the love of Jesus and not the evil of others. That truth has only really sunk in the past two years. It’s been a life-giving revelation. Jesus says I am his image bearer - maybe dented, but never destroyed. Damaged, but never devalued- like kintsugi, the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery with gold.
Jesus is pleased to love me. He doesn’t endure me; he cherishes me.
I have been clinging to God as revealed in Jesus, because they are One. I needed the Greatest Story Ever Told to be absolutely true: God’s love will overcome all evil, sin, suffering, and pain, and will make all things new.
I needed a God who could redeem the sinful violence done to me – and the sinful violaters. I didn’t want just a good ending for me in which all broken things are made new. I wanted even those who violated me to be redeemed and restored. Why? Because some of them were people I loved. If God can make that right, that’s the greatest story ever told.
What if he people who did the worst things are brought to repentance, salvation, and restoration? What if one day I could fully fellowship with those who hurt me, not as a white-washing of their sin, but as redemptive narrative of repentance and reconciliation that ends in loving fellowship?
I needed a God who is love without remainder, whose very being and every action is a display of love. I needed a Savior:
· Who, through his crucifixion, “will draw all people to himself.” (John 12:32,32)
· Who will “… reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.” (Colossians 1:19,20)
· Who will “…make known to us in all wisdom and insight the secret of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fulness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.” (Ephesians 1:9,10)
· In whom “heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things, which God has spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began.” (Acts 3:20-21)
· Who is “highly exalted…that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue joyfully confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:9-11)
· Of whom “every created being in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all therein, will say, ‘To him who sits upon the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might into the ages of ages!’” (Revelation 5:12-13)
· Who “is seated on the throne saying, “Behold, I am making all things new.” (Revelation 21:5)
· Who "is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance." (2 Peter 3:9)
· Who “will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined. And he will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever; and the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.” (Isaiah 25:6-8)
· From whom nothing can separate us. “What can come between us and the love of God’s Anointed? Can troubles, hardships, persecution, hunger, poverty, danger, or even death? The answer is, absolutely nothing…. no matter what comes, we will always taste victory through Him who loved us. For I have every confidence that nothing—not death, life, heavenly messengers, dark spirits, the present, the future, spiritual powers, height, depth, nor any created thing—can come between us and the love of God revealed in the Anointed, Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35-39)
I think Jesus is better than I can imagine. I used to sing a hymn: “The love of God is greater far than tongue or pen can ever tell.” The God who is sovereign over all of what happened to me was fully revealed in the cruciform and hopeful love of Jesus. God will make all things new, will reconcile a broken, groaning creation to God, and will wipe every tear from our eye. He has promised to do this. To this I cling.
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All things considered, here’s what I hope a healing Anthony can look like as you pastor.
First, I want to become increasingly grounded in my identity as a child of God, keyed in on how God sees me, because that’s truth about who I am. I am who God knows me to be. All kinds of people have all kinds of impressions about me. I have impressions about me, for goodness sakes. While I want to be attuned and open to the input of others in my life (because I have blind spots and flaws that a loving community can help me improve), at the end of the day I want to be sure I am thinking God’s thoughts about me, and having God’s heart for me.
Second, I want to be wise and helpful with my words, God willing. It is really good to use words to heal and not hurt. But I also want to stop trying to control tense situations or regulate other people’s emotions by choosing just the perfect words and tone so that nothing will ever go wrong! I want to remember that it’s entirely unrealistic to expect that we will always live in perfect harmony.
If there is tension, I want to assess if I did something wrong and if so, attempt to make it right. But I’m not going to let anxiety and fear churn inside of me as I wonder what others are thinking and feeling and panic until I fix it.
If someone needs to address something with me, I will pray that you are comfortable telling me. If you aren’t, I pray you will find someone who can come with you, and I can learn how to be more approachable for you. I just can’t keep trying to read minds and anticipate offense.
Third, I want to be the kind of pastor in whom God has “worked together for good” (Romans 8:28) a calling, personality and presence from the sum total of my life. Jesus has been sovereign over what I experienced and how he has healed me, and Jesus has a reason for that.
Considering what I said earlier about power dynamics, I have needed (for my own sake) to differentiate between power and authority particularly in institutions (the church, the state, businesses, etc). These might not even be the right words, but they are the best ones I have, and I am not going to obsess on getting the words just right
Power, as I’ve come to think of it, is something that’s often tied to a role or title. It can be granted externally—by a system, a position, or a hierarchy—and it gives someone the ability to make people do things. This can be a good things, but I still get uneasy. In my history, for several key formative years, people with institutional power used it to control, manipulate, and harm me.
As I noted earlier, I have had really good experiences with powerful people since then, so the issue isn’t having power per se. It’s when I see people flex—dominate, throw their weight around—It feels unsafe, even if they don’t mean harm, and it actually is safe.
So, I personally am uncomfortable with power. But authority, to me, is different. These are my definitions and distinctions, but it has helped me think through this.
I see authority as having a ‘weight’ in the lives of others not because you demand it, but because they willing give it to you. In this view, authoritative people doesn’t coerce—they invite. They don’t impose—they influence through modeling credibility, consistency, and love.
Jesus had all “delegated power” (Matthew 28:18)[2] in heaven and on earth, and he used it to serve, not to control. He invited; he washed feet. He gave his life. He didn’t demand allegiance through force—he loved people into transformation and invited them into the Kingdom. All followers of Jesus have chosen to give him the “weight” of authority in their lives in response to who he is and what he has done.
Because of the distinction I just made, I now think of myself as an invitational pastor. It’s my effort to fulfill this role in a way that acknowledges all the ways God has allowed life to form me. Jesus invites us to follow him; I will invite you to follow Jesus ever more deeply.
Do you remember that I didn’t like putting a halter on a horse to lead it? It turns out horses will follow you without a halter. There is a scenario in which someone leads and someone follows - because they want to do so. That was my favorite day of equine therapy.
For horses, it’s about body language and other subtle things that help them feel safe. It’s different for people – or is it? Maybe it’s that and more? All I know is that I much preferred inviting Vinny (the horse) to follow me rather than making him.
I will invite you to practice repentance when you wrong others, and extend forgiveness to those who wrong you.
I will invite you to pursue holiness, purity, righteousness, integrity and love. But I’m not going to make you.
If I could actually make you do those things, I doubt they would stick, because you need to choose them in response to Jesus, not because of pressure from Anthony. People in the recovery community will tell you that forced interventions don’t have a high success rate; when people choose to pursue recovery and health, that’s the starting point that bears the most fruit.
Meanwhile, I believe that any authority I have in the role as a pastor comes not from a title but from two things that ought to be present in all of us: speaking truth with grace, and living with loving, cruciform integrity
To the extent that I am leading us in this role as pastor, I am committed to leading not by cult of personality or coercion or showmanship or anything like that. I am not interested in pastoral flexing.
I must speak true things with grace, guided by Scripture, the Holy Spirit and the community of God’s people around me who hold me accountable. And I must commit to living a life of cruciform love that lines up with the truth I teach so that, as Paul says, I don’t disqualify myself.
Any meaningful authority – “weightiness” - I have with you must come not from my title or because I flex or because I have a microphone. It must come from a life characterized by integrity, truth, and cruciform love so that, like Paul said, “follow me – as I follow Christ.”
Really then, it’s not follow Anthony any more than it’s follow Paul. It’s follow Christ who is in us, a reality that is hopefully on display.
Finally, I will constantly talk about the love of God. A renewed focus on the love of God as revealed through Jesus was the rock I have stood on the past two years to weather this storm. I don’t know how many times I cried listening to podcasts that unpacked what the love of God really looked like, not just for me but for those who did bad things to me. So I will insist that God is love without remainder, and His love extends to all people.
I am increasingly persuaded by the Eastern Orthodox view that God’s only attribute is love, with every other description we use functioning as a description of how God’s love is expressed (a merciful love, a just love, a kind love, and patient love, an all-powerful love, etc.)
And I will insist that the primary sign of our transformation into the image of God is that we are characterized by the love of God and others growing in our lives. What is the first fruit of the Spirit? Love.
The cruciform love of God and the power displayed in the resurrection show us that salvation, redemption, healing and hope are all very real things. I know this, because I have experienced it. I know this because at least one of my abusers repented and finished his life safe in the arms of Jesus. The person I mentioned at the beginning whose revelation of trauma shook my memories loose? He prays that his abuser makes it to heaven. He wants the restoration of all things in the end.
I do to. It could happen. It turns out that history is not destiny when Jesus intervenes.
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I’m not fully healed yet - but I feel like I’m walking closer than ever with Jesus, who began a good work in me, and promises to complete it.
And I believe more than ever that the love of God is stronger than any pain, any trauma, any wound, any sin in my life and yours.
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[1] Interestingly, my introversion has been making itself known. I am pretty sure I subconsciously learned how to be an extrovert to control the environments I was in. The more I have found healing the past two years, the more I am pretty sure I am an introvert at heart. But that’s a side note.
[2] That is how HELPS Word Studies defins “authority,” which is used in most translations.